I've made 3 cards today focussing on the Looking Glass range of dies from Hero Arts which I just love the concept of and if you have more than one you can start to mix and match the layers to create even more interesting scenes!

I started simple just using the Paris die set as it was designed to be used, using the matching alignment stencil to line up the front panel centrally on my cardstock.  The street lamps form part of that front layer and then teh other two dies create the Eifel Tower and tree layers behind.   I coloured the lamps with alcohol markers and added glitter for the lamps.  The tower was just cut from black card with a white gel pen highlight and the trees were cut from green and then coloured with alcohol markers again over the top with some of the original colour showing through.   For the sky I used the stencil to ink blend blue and purple oxides and used the gel pen to create the stars.  The sentiments come from Itty Bitty Birthday Stamp from MFT.

Once I'd got to grips with the principles I thought I'd start to play!   So instead of cutting whole panels I cut a sheet of white card into 7cm squares and cut all the dies from 3 other Looking Glass sets - Rain and Clouds; Windmill and Tulips and Lighthouse.

For the Windmill card, I stuck to 3 layers - the clouds from Rain and Clouds, the windmill and one layer of tulips.   All coloured with alocohol parkers and pencils for the details on the sails.  I then used a scrap of 8cm blue card as a background to be deliberately larger than the frame (partly for the look, but also as my white card was a slightly different shade to the base card which bugged me!)   Sentiments are from Itty Bitty Birthday Stamp from MFT  and For Mom Names by Colorado Craft Company.

For the final card I had a layer of clouds and rain (cut from blue card) from the Rain and Clouds die left, so I paired those with a couple of layers from the Lighthouse set in the foreground - I could even have added the tree layer too I think.  Again all the foreground layers were coloured with alcohol markers and to get around the white card mismatch, I used a black marker to colour the top layer of the frame.  The sentiment is from MFT's Essential Sentiments set.

Hope that's given you an idea of how versatile these dies can be - there are some more coming out for Christmas!

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We are expecting Avery Elle and Stamping Bella this week, along with the latest release from MFT Stamps.   I'll do my best to get them in store asap but as mentioned last week, my Aunt had knee surgery last week and due to a lack of social services support, we've had to move her into our attic so I'm doing a lot of "extra" things each day at the moment.   Bear with us if we're a little slower responding than normal.  

Thanks.  

Tara